Call for Papers: JURIX 2011

A call for papers — with submission deadline of 5 September 2011 — has been issued for JURIX 2011: The 24th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, to be held 14-16 December 2011 at the University of Vienna, in Vienna, Austria.

Papers are invited on the following topics:

• Support for lawyers, in legal reasoning, document drafting, negotiation;
• Support for the production and management of legislation, in agenda setting, policy analysis, drafting, workflow management, monitoring implementation;
• Support for the judiciary, in application of the law, analysis of evidence, management of cases;
• Support for police activities, in forensic inquiries, search and evaluation of evidence, management of investigations;
• Support for public administration, in applying regulations and managing information;
• Support for the acquisition, management or use of legal knowledge, using rules, cases, neural networks, intelligent agents or other methods;
• Systems and methods to support policies and legal issues for social networks;
• Retrieval of legal information;
• Legal education;
• Digital-rights management;
• Alternative dispute resolution, particularly on-line;
• Regulatory compliance and compliance of business processes;
• Theoretical foundations for the use of Artificial Intelligence techniques in the legal domain;
• Models of legal knowledge, including concepts (legal ontologies), rules, cases, principles, values and procedures;
• Legal inference and argumentation;
• Verification and validation of legal knowledge systems;
• Management of legal information in the semantic web;
• XML standards for legal documents, including legislative, judicial, administrative acts as well as private documents, such as contracts;
• Modelling the legal interactions of autonomous agents and digital institutions;
• Methods for managing organizational change when introducing legal knowledge systems;
• Evaluation of systems using advanced informatics techniques in legal applications;
• Interdisciplinary applications of legal informatics methods and systems.

For more information, please see the call for papers.

HT Professor Dr. Henry Prakken.

Deadline Extended to 17 January: Call for Papers for ICAIL 2011

[NOTE: The call for papers submission deadline has been extended to 17 January 2011, according to @JackGConrad.]

A call for papers has been issued for ICAIL 2011: The 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, to be held 6-10 June 2011 at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

The conference is organized by IAAIL: The International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law.

A mentoring program is being offered for authors wishing to submit papers to the conference.

Here are the submission deadlines:

• “Mentoring program request deadline: November 8, 2010
• Mentoring program paper deadline: November 15, 2010
• Submission of workshop and tutorial proposals: December 6, 2010
• Submission of abstracts (optional): January 3, 2011″
• Submission of papers extended deadline: January 17, 2011

Papers are invited on the following topics:

• “Formal and computational models of legal reasoning
• Knowledge acquisition techniques for the legal domain, including natural language processing and data mining
• Computational models of argumentation and decision making
• Legal knowledge representation including legal ontologies and common sense knowledge
• Computational models of evidential reasoning
• Modeling norms for multi-agent systems
• Modeling negotiation and contract formation
• Computational models of case-based legal reasoning
• Conceptual or model-based legal information retrieval
• Automated information extraction from legal databases and texts
• Intelligent legal tutoring systems
• Intelligent support systems for the legal domain
• E-discovery and e-disclosure
• Automatic legal text classification and summarization
• Machine learning and data mining applied to legal databases”

For more information, please see the call for papers.

HT Jack G. Conrad.

December 6 Deadline: ICAIL 2011 Workshop & Tutorial Proposals

[NOTE: 6 December 2010 is the deadline for submitting workshop and tutorial proposals.]

A call for papers has been issued for ICAIL 2011: The 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, to be held 6-10 June 2011 at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

The conference is organized by IAAIL: The International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law.

A mentoring program is being offered for authors wishing to submit papers to the conference.

Here are the remaining submission deadlines:

• “Submission of workshop and tutorial proposals: December 6, 2010
• Submission of abstracts (optional): January 3, 2011
• Submission of papers deadline: January 10, 2011″

Papers are invited on the following topics:

• “Formal and computational models of legal reasoning
• Knowledge acquisition techniques for the legal domain, including natural language processing and data mining
• Computational models of argumentation and decision making
• Legal knowledge representation including legal ontologies and common sense knowledge
• Computational models of evidential reasoning
• Modeling norms for multi-agent systems
• Modeling negotiation and contract formation
• Computational models of case-based legal reasoning
• Conceptual or model-based legal information retrieval
• Automated information extraction from legal databases and texts
• Intelligent legal tutoring systems
• Intelligent support systems for the legal domain
• E-discovery and e-disclosure
• Automatic legal text classification and summarization
• Machine learning and data mining applied to legal databases”

For more information, please see the call for papers.

HT Jack G. Conrad.

Call for Papers: ICAIL 2011

A call for papers has been issued for ICAIL 2011: The 13th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, to be held 6-10 June 2011 at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

The conference is organized by IAAIL: The International Association for Artificial Intelligence and Law.

A mentoring program is being offered for authors wishing to submit papers to the conference.

Here are the submission deadlines:

• “Mentoring program request deadline: November 8, 2010
• Mentoring program paper deadline: November 15, 2010
• Submission of workshop and tutorial proposals: December 6, 2010
• Submission of abstracts (optional): January 3, 2011
• Submission of papers deadline: January 10, 2011″

Papers are invited on the following topics:

• “Formal and computational models of legal reasoning
• Knowledge acquisition techniques for the legal domain, including natural language processing and data mining
• Computational models of argumentation and decision making
• Legal knowledge representation including legal ontologies and common sense knowledge
• Computational models of evidential reasoning
• Modeling norms for multi-agent systems
• Modeling negotiation and contract formation
• Computational models of case-based legal reasoning
• Conceptual or model-based legal information retrieval
• Automated information extraction from legal databases and texts
• Intelligent legal tutoring systems
• Intelligent support systems for the legal domain
• E-discovery and e-disclosure
• Automatic legal text classification and summarization
• Machine learning and data mining applied to legal databases”

For more information, please see the call for papers.

HT Jack G. Conrad.

Call for Papers: JURIX 2010

A call for papers — with abstract submission deadline of 29 August 2010 and extended full paper submission deadline of 12 September 2010 5 September 2010 — has been issued for JURIX 2010: The 23rd International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems, to be held 16-17 December 2010 at the University of Liverpool Department of Computer Science in Liverpool, England, UK.

The submission deadline for tutorials, workshops and demonstration proposals is 19 September 2010.

Papers and proposals are invited on the following topics:

• “systems supporting lawyers, in legal reasoning, document drafting, negotiation
• systems supporting the production and management of legislation, in agenda setting, policy analysis, drafting, workflow management, monitoring implementation
• systems supporting the judiciary, in application of the law, analysis of evidence, management of cases
• systems supporting police activities, in forensic inquiries, search and evaluation of evidence, management of investigations
• systems supporting public administration, in applying regulations and managing information
• systems for the retrieval of legal information
• systems supporting legal education
• systems for digital-rights management
• systems supporting the acquisition, management or use of legal knowledge, using rules, cases, neural networks, intelligent agents or other methods
• systems supporting alternative dispute resolution, particularly on-line
• systems and methods to support regulatory compliance and compliance of business processes
• systems and method to support policies and legal issues for social networks
• theoretical foundations for the use of Artificial Intelligence in the legal domain
• models of legal knowledge, including concepts (legal ontologies), rules, cases, principles, values and procedures
• models of legal inference and argumentation
• methods for verifying and validating legal knowledge systems
• methods and techniques for managing legal information in the semantic web
• methods for managing organizational change when introducing legal knowledge systems
• XML standards for legal documents, including legislative, judicial, administrative acts as well as private documents, such as contracts
• methods for modelling the legal interactions of autonomous agents and digital institutions”

For more information, please see the call for papers.

HT Dr. Radboud G. F. Winkels.

[NOTE: This post was last updated on 1 September 2010 to add the extended full paper submission deadline.]

New Book: Law and Technology: Looking into the Future: Selected Essays

The following new legal informatics conference proceedings have been published: Law and Technology: Looking into the Future. Selected Essays (Meritxell Fernández-Barrera, Norberto Nuno Gomes de Andrade, Primavera de Filippi, Mario Viola de Azevedo Cunha, Giovanni Sartor, Pompeu Casanovas eds., 2010), ISBN: 9788883980602, 370 Pages. This volume contains papers originally presented at The Future of … Conference on Law and Technology, held 28-29 October 2008 at the European University Institute’s ONE-LEX Project.

Here is the abstract:

Perspective analysis are particularly important in the ICT-law domain, since ICTs have known the most accelerated development in the last decades, and the deepest social effects (determined the passage from the industrial society to the social formation labelled by us information, knowledge or network society), matched by pervasive legal change (from data protection, to intellectual property, to internet law). As ICT development and the ICT driven social evolution are still accelerating their steps, it is necessary that the law does not remain confined to current problems and established outcomes: it needs to look into the future scenarios for capturing the sense of dynamics now underway and for preparing adequate legal response.

Here are the legal informatics papers included in the volume, with links to full-text or abstracts where available:

• Pompeu Casanovas, Relational Law and the Next Generation of Web Services;
• Anton Geist, The Open Revolution: Using Citation Analysis to Improve Legal Text Retrieval;
• Giuseppe Contissa, Modelling European and Italian Tax Legislation with LKIF Language;
• Tobias Mahler, Tool-Supported Legal Risk Management: A Road Map.

For more information, including the complete table of contents, please see the book description.

HT Professor Enrico Francesconi.

Bailenson on Transformed Social Interaction in Virtual Reality

Professor Jeremy N. Bailenson of the Stanford University Department of Communication on 25 January 2010 gave a presentation, entitled Transformed Social Interaction in Virtual Reality, at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Several aspects of the presentation may be of interest to legal informatics or legal communication researchers:

• Professor Bailenson discussed his research on the acquisition of false memories in virtual reality: Kathryn Y. Segovia & Jeremy N. Bailenson, Virtually True: Children’s Acquisition of False Memories in Virtual Reality, 12 Media Psychology 371 (2009).

Abstract: Previous work on human memory has shown that prompting participants with false events and self-relevant information via different types of media such as narratives, edited 2-dimensional images, and mental imagery creates false memories. This study tested a new form of media for studying false memory formation: Immersive Virtual Environment Technology (IVET). Using this tool, we examined how memory was affected by viewing dynamic simulations of avatars performing novel actions. In the study, 55 preschool and elementary children were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 memory prompt conditions (idle, mental imagery, IVET simulation of another child, or IVET simulation of self). Each child was questioned 3 different times: once before the memory prompt, once immediately after the memory prompt, and once approximately 5 days after the memory prompt. Results showed that preschool children were equally likely to develop false memories regardless of memory prompt condition. But, for elementary children, the mental imagery and IVET self conditions caused significantly more false memories than the idle condition. Implications regarding the use of digital media in courtroom settings, clinical therapy settings, entertainment, and other applications are discussed.

• Professor Bailenson discussed several studies suggesting techniques that make one more or less persuasive, or more or less confident while communicating, in virtual reality. That research may be of interest to those studying potential applications of virtual reality to legal communication and decisionmaking, such as in legislative or administrative lawmaking, judicial or administrative proceedings, online alternative dispute resolution, legal negotiation, communication with clients, policy debates, etc.;
• During the discussion, Professor Julie E. Cohen of Georgetown Law Center remarked that Professor Bailenson’s research suggests that virtual reality vitiates perhaps the most important basis of evidentiary validity in U.S. evidence law: personal knowledge obtained via direct perception;
• Throughout the presentation and discussion, Professor Bailenson discussed a variety of innovative methods for conducting empirical research on human cognition and behavior in virtual reality; many of those methods seem applicable to a range of legal informatics and legal communication research.

[NOTE: The following was added on 13 February 2010:] Click here for Professor Judith Donath’s post about the presentation.

Call for Papers: DALT 2010: Declarative Agent Languages & Technologies Workshop

[NOTE: Updated on 1 February 2010 to note that submission deadlines have been extended to 9 February 2010.]

A call for papers, with submission deadline of 9 February 2010 2 February 2010, has been issued for DALT 2010: The 8th International Workshop on Declarative Agent Languages and Technologies, to be held 10 or 11 May 2010, in Toronto, Canada, in conjunction with AAMAS 2010: The 10th International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems.

Of the DALT 2010 topics respecting which papers are invited, the following seem particularly relevant to legal informatics researchers:

• Application of declarative techniques to declarative description of contracts and negotiation policies; and
• Application of declarative techniques to security and trust in multiagent systems.

For the complete list of topics, and for more information, please see the call for papers.

HT Dr. Wamberto Vasconcelos.

Lin & Kraus, Can Automated Agents Proficiently Negotiate With Humans?

Dr. Raz Lin and Professor Kraus Sarit, both of the Bar-Ilan University Computer Science Department, have published a review essay entitled Can Automated Agents Proficiently Negotiate With Humans?, Communications of the ACM (CACM), January 2010, at 78. Here is a summary:

In this article, the authors review current research on systems in which automated agents negotiate with humans. They “focus on the question of whether an automated agent can proficiently negotiate with human negotiators.” They “concentrate on adversarial bilateral bargaining in which the automated agent is matched with people.” The law-related systems discussed include various kinds of ecommerce as well as noneconomic bargaining.

Call for Papers: NMR 2010 & Subworkshops on Preferences & Norm and on Argument, Dialog & Decision

[NOTE: As of 2 February 2010, the submission deadline for the Subworkshop on Preferences & Norm has been extended to 15 February 2010, per Frederic Koriche.]

Calls for papers, all of which have submissions deadlines of 29 January 2010 [but see extended deadline noted above], have been issued for NMR 2010: The 13th International Workshop on Non-Monotonic Reasoning, and particularly its Subworkshop on Preferences & Norm and its Subworkshop on Argument, Dialog & Decision. Both events will be held 14-16 May 2010, at Sutton Place, Toronto, Canada.

For the Subworkshop on Preferences & Norm, papers are invited on the following topics:

• preference languages
• preference semantics
• defeasible logics
• reasoning about preferences
• preference-based planning
• preferences in constraint programming
• preferences in logic programming
• preferences in multi-agent systems
• preference revision and fusion
• preference elicitation
• preference learning
• preference modeling frameworks
• prima facie obligations
• deontic dilemmas
• normative multiagent systems
• formal models of norm change
• merging normative systems
• permissive norms
• epistemic norms
• constitutive norms
• imperatives

For the Subworkshop on Argument, Dialog and Decision, papers are invited on the following topics:

• semantics
• proof theory
• complexity and resource limitations
• applications to epistemic and practical reasoning
• applications to informal theories of argumentation
• comparison with other types of nonmonotonic logic
• the development of argument-based logical systems in formal models of multi-agent reasoning and interaction, such as:
• fact finding investigations
• negotiation
• distributed sense-making
• dispute resolution and mediation
• decision making

Specialized calls have also been issued for the conference’s other Subworkshops, the submission deadline for all of which is 29 January 2010, and which may also be of interest to legal informatics/communication researchers:

• Declarative Programming for NMR
• Action and Belief Change
• Commonsense and NMR for Ontologies
• NMR and Uncertainty

For the main NMR 2010 conference, papers are invited on the following topics:

• foundations of non-monotonic reasoning,
• default reasoning,
• representing actions and planning,
• belief revision and information fusion,
• reasoning and decision-making under uncertainty,
• answer set programming,
• belief updating and inconsistency handling,
• similarity-based reasoning,
• empirical studies of reasoning strategies,
• argument-based non-monotonic logics,
• abductive reasoning, algorithms and implementations,
• non-monotonic logics in multi-agent interaction, including negotiation and dispute resolution,
• non-monotonic reasoning for ontologies,
• declarative programming for non-monotonic reasoning, and
• reasoning with preferences.

For more information, please see the main conference Website.

HT Frederic Koriche.